Photogravure

As an assembly of objects, Allen’s series of photogravures looks to the past through notions of the collection. In the construction of formal relationships and juxtapositions, Allen recontextualizes objects in her collection to propose new meanings. As Susan Stewart observes in her remarkable book On Longing, “The collection is a form of art as play, a form of involving the reframing of objects within a world of attention and manipulation of context.”² In this respect, the collection exists within its own space and time but maintains a connection to the past, which perhaps describes the increased value, both personal and monetary, of collections that comprise antique objects and old things.

In Allen’s handling, such objects veer away from static depiction but rather, despite the works somewhat minimal and ethereal aesthetic, embody complex layers of meaning that operate within the spaces of the personal/private and the public/collective.

Allen’s objects tell untold stories. Unlike the silence often imposed upon objects within the museum collection, Allen’s objects do nothing to conceal or obscure narrative but rather allude to certain truths. Allen’s story is a tale of conquest and of unequal relations of power.